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Table Topics Ideas
right|thumb|200px Famous Composers The Table Topics Master used the events of a famous composer's life. This is how it worked * He put the names of four cities (Vienna, Berlin, Paris London) in five different envelopes * He handed the envelopes to the four speakers. * Speaker ONE opened his envelope and started to prepare a talk on Vienna. * The Table Topics Master told us of the composer's early life in Vienna. * The Table Topics Master told the SECOND speaker to open her envelope. She did so and started preparing a talk on Berlin. * The FIRST speaker gave his speech on Vienna while the SECOND speaker was preparing. * The Table Topics Master told us about the composer's time in Berlin, and before asking the SECOND speaker to speak, told the THIRD speaker to start preparing. And so it went. * At the end, we had to guess the composer's name. Submitted by mailto:erichv@icon.co.za Unusual objects * The Table Topics master brough unusual implements and tools from around the house. * Every speaker reached into a closed bag to take out the implement. Then he or she had to talk about the implement and what its purpose is. * After the speech, the club could guess what the implement really was. Submitted by mailto:sue.munro@wol.co.za Twenty Questions * The Table Topics master chose five subjects. * Then he played 20 questions with the club until they finally deduced what the subject was. * At that point, the designated speaker had to stand up and give a talk for 1 to 2 minutes about the subject. The subjects were things like: Encyclopedia Brittanica; Camembert cheese; the Internal Combustion Engine; Winter; and (of course) Toastmasters International. * This does take rather longer than 15 minutes so is good for a meeting that is short on prepared speaking. Submitted by mailto:erichv@icon.co.za A list of table topic ideas that I've collected is at http://www.geocities.com/Rick_Clements/ideas.htm . Submitted by mailto:rick_clements@yahoo.com Plan a vacation * Prepare cards with transportation options (car, motor home, airplane, balloon, etc) and cards with your budget ($5000, $100, just won the lottery, etc). Each participant takes a transportation and budget car and tells about their vacation. (Submitted by Bob Brentin, Midland 2399, Tuesday Talkers 5652) Stop time * If you could stop time for an hour, what would you do with that hour? (Submitted by Bob Brentin, Midland 2399, Tuesday Talkers 5652) Celebrity dry cleaners * We had one envelope with a bunch of celebrity names, and another envelope with some ordinary service occupations. * The speaker picked a name and an occupation, and then had to explain why they would recommend that person to do the job, as if they were referring him to a friend or as if they were a job reference. * For example, Oprah Winfrey would be an excellent beautician because she loves to talk about... or Tom Cruise would be a great pool man because I... or Michael Jordan is a great gardener because he can... (Submitted by Doug Hirt, President, Allmerica Articulates, #9114/62) 15 minutes of fame * Everyone wears one of those old style cheap Zorro/Halloween/Party masks and (now that no one knows who you really are) :) becomes a famous person in history i.e. Lincoln, Washington, King etc. ** Give them topics like. Tell me President Washington, How did you motivate the troops to cross the Delaware that cold wintery night? etc. (Submitted by Mike Gerrick - Youngstown Executive Toastmasters 408) Woodchuck marketing * One of life's ongoing questions is 'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?' Presuming a woodchuck could chuck wood, how would you go about promoting the sales and distribution, including the description and usage of the wood chucks the wood chucks have chucked? (The Table Topic Master should practice this before actually giving it at a TT session.) (Submitted by Bill Dobson - D40 Webmaster) Needy Nudists * Once people become aware that you are a Toastmaster, you will find that you will get requests to speak on behalf of other organizations. Would you demonstrate such skill by giving us a fund raising solicitation for the Needy Nudist Network. (Submitted by Bill Dobson - D40 Webmaster) Faking it * One of the newer TV shows is called Faking It. In this show, contestants pretend they are in radically different careers for a week and try to fool a panel of judges. You have been selected for the show and your new career is going to be a Haitian Voodoo witch doctor. How are you going to prepare for this role? (Submitted by Bill Dobson - D40 Webmaster) Musical notes * One of my all time favorites (and it can be varied each time) is to take several 30 seconds cuts of various musical pieces and tape them. When you play a cut from the tape, ask the participant to explain what thoughts the music brings to them (i.e. theme from The Godfather, Vivaldi's "Spring," Little Richard's "Good Golly Ms Mollie," Pavaradi singing an aria, or The Barney Song) Really makes no difference about the music, it all brings some thoughts to the presenter. I have Doo Whop, Opera, Country, Frank Sinatra, TV Themes, etc. Takes a little time to prepare but can be used over and over again. (Submitted by Ronald J. Bower - DTM, Club 3478, District 37) (Some of these tips originally appeared on http://regionvi.62toast.com/tabletopics.html) -- 09:35, 15 Sep 2005 (UTC) Witnesses for the Prosecution The pre-trial hearing Enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr John Darrowby, Managing Director of Darrowby, Darrowby, and Stench, Pornographic Publishers. The Right Honourable Mr/s Table Topic Master presides. * On the 16th November between the hours of 6.00 pm and 6.30 pm, Mr John Darrowby was murdered by person or persons unknown. The body was found on the landing outside the conference room by Toastmasters leaving their meeting at 20h30. Suspects will have to clear themselves and implicate another speaker in a defence lasting between one and two minutes Mr Darrowby’s body had suffered various injuries as listed below: # He had been stabbed with an intricately carved Arabian dagger #A red silk dressing gown cord had been used to garrotte him. #He had been shot with a small calibre bullet used in a Baby Browning automatic pistol. #The bolt from a crossbow protruded from between his shoulders. #Sundry chest wounds had been made by a Japanese Samurai sword found near the body. #A post mortem investigation revealed that he had recently ingested a lethal dose of arsenic contained in 7Kg of peanuts of the type used as snacks in Toastmasters meetings. #His lungs contained water and his clothing was saturated #His skull had been crushed by a bloodstained rock found near the doorway. Photo prompts From Brian Christiansen Print out the following page: http://puzzlephotos.blogspot.com/ (the pictures come out about , sometimes 2, to a page) and use the pictures as the prompts for the table topics. The speaker can either tell what the particular item is or bluff about it. Predictions Print out a bunch of Nostradamus's quatrains, give one to whoever is chosen to speak, and have them be clever and thus tell us what the prophecy means. Round Robin One person starts a story. The second speaker has to continue the story and so on, until all the speakers are done. Fun Geography Print out flags from some obscure countries. The speaker has to talk about the country for 2 minutes. The topic masters adds some real fun facts about each country. This can be done with the names of geographical features - mountains, lakes, rivers. Get really obscure ones and had people tell which they were and discuss the location. (Submitted by Joy). Category:stub